... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Save the Earth... drink from trash!

I was noticing on my Starbucks cup (thanks again, Cecily, for the gift card!), while out on a mini-date with my wife, that they use post-consumer recycled fibers for some of their materials... like 60% of the little paper "don't burn your fingers" thing that goes around the cup, and 10% of the cup itself. Thus, I'm drinking my nice, fresh, hot Starbucks coffee out of someone else's trash. That's right! Cool, eh? (Actually, it was hot, or at least rather warm, not cool; I don't like iced coffee or iced lattes...) Or, maybe, disgusting. Now don't you want to rush out to grab a Starbucks? (If you care, it was a Cinnamon Dolce Latte, skinny - that is, skim milk or something, mostly sugar free; my wife wasn't too enamored by the flavor, while I thought it was ok, but might have been nicer if it was slightly sweeter, or perhaps more cinnamonny. Actually, it was a cinnamon dolce latte whether or not you care; the "if you care" part was only meant to indicate that I was telling you in case you wanted to know.)

I think Joe Muggs (in Books-a-Million) is probably the same way. In fact, I'd bet a bunch of these coffee (and other paper-product) cups are the same way. So, save the earth... drink from someone else's trash! You know, we could cut down even more... why bother recycling, which takes resources (and energy) to accomplish? Why not just have a place where you turn in your cup when you're done with it and it can be immediately reused for the next guy's drink? After all, the coffee's pretty hot, so it'll kill all the germs anyway, right?

And we could go even further, like not washing the dishes... it costs money to heat the water, and we have water involved (and we're already in a drought in the Southeast anyway - apparently back in October they were expecting some cities to simply "run out of water"... ). So let's skip the dishwashing. Maybe use some Clorox wipes. Use the new, no-streaking formula to avoid any nasty looking streaks on the plates, and overfill them with food so you can't see any leftovers from the previous eater's meal.

Boy, maybe I should be a conservationist after all... I seem to have a lot of ideas for reducing human impact on the ecology of the earth, eh? For instance, if we get rid of all the people who want us to increase our corporate fuel economy, we'll have fewer cars on the road, thus using less fuel; in addition, the roadways would be less congested, leading to less time that the remaining cars would be sitting at idle, burning fuel and not making any headway, and would spend less time having to accelerate (due to less time sitting idle) thus leading to still further increased fuel economy... and less frustration on the roadways, leading to more considerate people, happier people, and better efficiency at our daily jobs, leading to increased productivity, lowering cost of goods, and increasing the economy of the US... hey! Cool! All that from simply doing away with those who think we need to increase our vehicles' fuel economy!

That's it, I'm running for president... feel free to write me in on your ballot. And I'll be more than happy to accept any campaign contributions...